The papers are anxious today at the violence in the Gaza Strip and there are concerns about the ascendancy of the gunmen of Hamas, with fears the territory could be morphing into something akin to Mogadishu.

"Gaza lurches towards Islamist mini-state" is the front-page headline in the Times, which says in its leader column that Hamas "must not be allowed to wreck hopes of peace in Gaza".

The Islamist faction have been fighting their secular rivals, Fatah, for several days now in Gaza, leaving some 80 people dead, in a conflict which the papers say is verging on a Palestinian civil war.

The green flag of Hamas was flying over more and more buildings in Gaza yesterday as its gunmen tightened their grip, with diehard Fatah supporters holed up in last-stand strongholds. "This is a victory for Islam and I hope we build our Islamic state," one 22-year-old Hamas member is quoted by the Times as saying.

The Guardian says there were heavy battles yesterday in the north and south of the strip, with Hamas "reportedly gaining the upper hand". The paper quotes Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and Fatah leader, who remains in the West Bank, and who said: "This is madness, the madness that is going on in Gaza now."

The EU said serious consideration should be given to deploying an international military force to stop the violence.

The Telegraph front page has a reportage piece, focusing on the bravery of peace marchers who were marching through the crossfire in Gaza yesterday. One marcher, Amal Hellis, 35, says: "I am not afraid. I will die to save my family and to save Palestine."

There were hundreds of protesters, who intermittently came under fire from gunmen. Television footage showed one extraordinary scene in which one unarmed male protester ran towards a man with an assault rifle and began pushing him backwards, seemingly oblivious to his own safety.

At least 17 people were killed yesterday, including several civilians, and two UN Relief and Works Agency staff, the Guardian says.

Stephen Farr, in the Times, writes: "The Israelis are forgotten - now war is with the enemy within." Elsewhere the paper notes that Hamas is not as powerful in the West Bank as it is in Gaza. And it argues that Israel should back Palestinian moderates and release the $700m in Palestinian tax receipts it has been holding onto following Hamas's election win last year, so that Gaza can function as a viable state.

There were reports last night of tentative ceasefire talks, but it appeared that nothing substantial had yet to be agreed.

In other developments in the region, Israel's parliament yesterday elected Shimon Peres to the largely-ceremonial role of president, the International Herald Tribune reports.

The paper has a large photograph of the Shia shrine in Samarra in Iraq, which has been attacked again, almost certainly by Sunni insurgents with links to al-Qaida.

The Sun's front page has a photograph of Davina Baker, 16, and her sister Jasmine, whose bodies were found at their home in the Cambridgeshire village of Stretham yesterday. It is thought they were stabbed to death.

The girls' mother, Rekha Kumari-Baker, 39, has been arrested on suspicion of murder.

The Guardian devotes much of its front page to what it describes as a "major development" in the BAE affair: the US department of justice is preparing to open a corruption investigation into the British arms firm.

The inquiry would cover the alleged £1bn payments made to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, which the Guardian has been investigating.

The Mirror and the Express lead on the emergence of an anonymous letter which claims that the body of missing British four-year-old Madeleine McCann has been dumped in a shallow grave around nine miles from where she vanished.

Portuguese police were preparing to investigate the site, a dirt road near Oxdiare, which is north-east of the resort of Praia da Luz, from where Madeleine is believed to have been abducted 42 days ago.

The letter was sent to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf and the Mirror reports that the handwriting matched that from a different letter that led to the discovery of the bodies of two murdered Belgian girls last year.

Stacey Lemmens, aged seven, and her step-sister Nathalie Mahy, 10, vanished in the Belgian city of Liege on June 10 last year and their bodies were found later that month after De Telegraaf received the first letter.

The Mirror says that the letter about Madeleine included a map downloaded from the same website - routenet.nl - as a map that was in the letter about the two Belgian girls.

A leading judge, Sir Stephen Richards, 56, was cleared yesterday of "flashing" at a female commuter on a train into central London.

Senior District Judge Timothy Workman dismissed the charges. He said he accepted the woman had given "clear, dignified, and truthful evidence", the Telegraph reports.

But the judge said the police had neither promptly nor properly investigated the claims and failed to obtain CCTV footage from the train that would have either proved the allegations or exonerated Sir Stephen.

As the Guardian's Steve Morris puts it, there were "few outward signs of a terrorism alert in north Cornwall yesterday". But, he adds, behind the scenes at Cornwall's two most famous eateries, Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant in Padstow and Jamie Oliver's Fifteen in Newquay, security was being stepped up after Cornish extremists claimed they were planning to target two of the country's most famous chefs.

It looks like the British tennis No 1, Andy Murray, could miss Wimbledon because of his wrist injury. "If I miss Wimbledon to get back to 100% fitness, I don't have a problem with that," Murray is quoted in the Express as saying, adding that he won't rush the decision.

The paper says his presentation of the worst-case scenario will be "sending a shiver down the spines of the tournament organisers already fretting about Tim Henman's form".

The Guardian's sport section, meanwhile, leads on a call from a Yorkshire MP for a fraud investigation into whether money-laundering was committed recently at Leeds United. Phil Willis, Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, has urged greater transparency in the ownership of clubs.